Bücher von Christoph Engel

The German silversmith Paula Strauss (1894-1943) was a pivotal figure in shaping the "Golden Twenties" and the creativedecades of the Bauhaus. Even early on, her jewelry objects and handmade items of silverware were reviewed with praise in thespecialist press, and national and international exhibitions followed. In joining the design studio of the silverware factoryPeter Bruckmann & Söhne, Heilbronn, in 1925, an unparalleled career began as Germany's first woman industrial designer. Thesilverware she designed-coffee and tea services-for handcrafted as well as machine production stands as an example of herown original style, which is defined by a purist idiom. Her professional success and her renown as a craftswoman and designer have been completely forgotten due to the nationalsocialist persecution of the Jews from 1933 on and her murder inAuschwitz. The time has now come to rediscover her work.

Human behaviour is infinitely complex, the result of thousands of interactions between predispositions, external factors and physical and cognitive processes. It is also highly unpredictable, which makes meaningful social engagement difficult without the aid of some external framework such as that offered by an institution. Both formal and informal institutions can provide the element of predictability necessary for successful, complex interactions, a factor which is often overlooked by institutional analysts and designers. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines including psychology, economics, and sociological and political studies, this book develops a coherent and accessible theory for explaining the unpredictability of individual behaviour. The author then highlights the danger of institutional reforms undermining the very capacity to generate predictability which is so central to their success. This book will appeal to academics, researchers and professionals in many fields including management studies, behavioural economics and the new, interdisciplinary field of institutional design.